Designing products as an integral part of Choreography of Interaction: The product s form as an integral part of movement. Sietske Klooster Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology & d e s i g nm o v e m e n t Berberisstraat 16 1032 EL Amsterdam, the Netherlands Tel: +316 14681018 sietske@designmovement.nl Kees (C.J.) Overbeeke Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology & Carnegie Mellon University Design Margaret Morrison.110 Pittsburgh PA 15213 USA Tel: +1 412 2687642 kees@andrew.cmu.edu Abstract Recent developments in design research concentrate on two themes (1) the unity of form, function and interaction and (2) the semantics of movement. The Design Movement approach incorporates unity of form, function and interaction through movement. Design Movement introduces the design of products as an integral part of Choreography of Interaction, i.e. as an integral part of (the design of) movement. This approach therefore puts forward a distinctive view on the relation of product form and movement in interaction design and, consequently, a view on semantics. In this paper we introduce this view. In order to do so, we explain the framework of Choreography of Interaction, its motivation, and the way the interaction choreographer uses it to create interaction. The framework is based on the idea (1) that movement is the embodiment of interaction and (2) that movement is physical, dynamic and meaningful. The framework incorporates the way Design Movement approaches the relation of product form, movement and semantics for interaction design. We realize that theoretically describing this approach is a nearly impossible venture. In fact, only through movement, through practicing it, the idea can actually be grasped. Therefore, we commence with examples of projects to illustrate our endeavour. Keywords: product design, form, interaction, movement, choreography, physicality, dynamics, meaning, semantics, integral.
1. Introducing During her graduation project Ontwerpen Beweegt ( Design Moves ) [1], the first author explored the way movement relates to design. This project was the starting point of ongoing research and development of the Design Movement approach. Design Movement is conceived as a cross-pollination of interaction orientated product design with dance improvisation and choreography. Design Movement understands movement as the embodiment of interaction and hence it perceives design as Choreography of Interaction. Herewith it introduces the design of products as an integral and motivating part of Choreography of Interaction and movement as pivotal for design. [2]. Both the design process and the design outcome are approached through Choreography of Interaction; creating and creation are interlaced. Choreography of Interaction is based on a framework, which incorporates the idea that movement is physical, dynamic and meaningful. Design Movement is an explorative approach, which develops through practical experience and experiment and is embedded in design research. It is not typical design research nor purely design practice; it involves both. Design Movement researches and develops primarily through bringing it into practice, reflecting on it and processing insights. This approach seeks interaction with and confirmation from research as it challenges parallel and related topics. Product design research recently re-focused on (1) the unity of form, function and interaction [3] and (2) the semantics of movement [4; 5]. We think that Design Movement offers a challenging contribution to this re-focussing. Since this approach addresses product design as just an integral part of Choreography of interaction, it demonstrates to have an inherent view on the relation of product form and movement in interaction design and, consequently, on semantics. In this paper we put this view before you reader, as input for discussion about the role of movement in interaction design. Having provided the reader with this introducing, we will first present a set of examples as we feel that theoretical, abstract understanding and insight are best supported by practical experience. These examples illustrate the ideas that are put forward in the following parts. In the third part we introduce Choreography of Interaction as something to be created. Here the Choreography of Interaction framework is introduced, which entangles product form and semantics and their integration in movement. We explain the way Choreography of Interaction operates as a creative and creating process in part 4. Here it becomes clear how the framework is established during the Choreography process and thus how movement embodies interaction, including product form and semantics. We bring this paper to a conclusion by putting forward the next steps we are about to take with this approach and the opportunities we see, and hope to unlock with laying out our ideas.
2. To illustrate As we ourselves experienced the need for examples from practice to understand theory and develop insights, our paper starts with this illustrative part. We intend to waken the reader s imagination and empathy and thus support conception of the more abstract parts of this paper. This second part depicts three cases. Each case starts with an introduction to the created Choreography of Interaction and a subsequent part that explains the process that preceded it. This matches the structure of the following parts in this paper, where part 3 focuses on Choreography of Interaction as a design outcome and part 4 on the Choreography as a process. 2.1 Commit: Choreography of Flower Arranging A light fluent rhythmically intertwining whirl of curving traces from outside inwards: With greedy admiration she looks down on top of the beautiful corollas, which she brings in one after another, composing a plane full of them. Elegantly lifting, she feels the weight hover in her one hand. From almost nothing the weight increases, while the other hand brings in more of these colourful flowers. Left and right arm turn and curve around each other, steering the circle and grooves of Commit to choose where to enter the flowers. With a rhythm of one flower after another, irregular, depending on the pace of choosing position and composition. The flowers open upwards where she looks down. The stalks weight hangs passively downwards while she holds them carefully with the tips of her fingers, steadily, just under the flowers corolla, aware of their fragility. Attentively, she slides the flowers into the curved grooves, with a slight deceleration when entering Commit and towards the flowers end position. Gradually the Commit-dish is filled with corollas and the stalks dangle lightly underneath. With a final slow gesture she brings the composed result downwards and hands it over to rest and bloom in the glass vase. This is a Choreography of Interaction and thus product design by Sietske Klooster, the first author of this paper. This case was part of her graduation project in 2002.
Having chosen to focus her Choreography of Interaction project on the activity of Flower Arranging, she first explored who and what are to be involved in her Choreography. As flower arranging has to do with the greedy admiration of the flower arranger towards flowers, the exploration started with these two involved dancers : By empathising with the user and thus moving into interaction, she searched for the way she wished the user and the flowers to be involved in arranging a bouquet. While doing so, she felt a bending circular connection between fingers, arms, shoulders, neck, head, eyes, line of sight, flower corollas, steels and back to the fingers again. She discovered this connection to be fluently deforming while looking down admiringly from different angles. While holding the fragile and beautiful flower carefully, she discovered the importance of the flower s centre of gravity. If she held the stalk relatively far under the corolla, this would result in an uncontrolled wiggle of the flower and necessarily forceful pinch with her fingers to prevent this to happen. Holding the stalk just under the corolla resulted in an elegant, stable balance and caring lift. At the same time she recognised greed to bring more beautiful flowers into her personal space, which she bordered by her arms. Having a shortage of hands she was urged to squeeze more and more stalks in her hand. Disliking this rough interplay with these fragile flowers, the choreographer impulsively slid the flowers between her fingers, enabling to hold more of them and protectively lift them in the palm of her hand. This impulsive discovery also resulted in an interesting relation between the corolla and the hand; they both opened upwards to the users admiring eyes. The stalk at the same time was free to passively hang under the lifting hand, in which the user could feel the weight grow while arranging more flowers. Sietske also realised her discovery resulted in a duet of arms: She saw a whirling correlation between both arms. The one arm embraced the space to bring the flowers into. The spaces between the fingers of this arm imposed directions for the other arm to bring the flowers from outside in. Both arms thus appeared to turn in relation to and towards each other, with an irregular, fluent rhythm of one flower after another, while choosing the entrance to the right composition. While doing this all, the role-play between user and flowers became evident. The admiring elegance of arranging flowers expressed a greedy kind of care. The fragile flowers were carefully forced for their beauty. The watching, collecting, turning, bending of the user, related to the passive, fragile, beautiful uplooking flowers. While this flowing rhythm of turning arms with a sequence of flowers evolved, the choreographer again met a limitation. She was still not able to hold the amount of flowers she wished to collect and compose. She wished to fill the embraced space and expand it into a plane of flowers, opening up towards their admirer. She felt the need
of an expansion of her hand into a grand collection plane. She wanted to enhance the turning of both arms around each other, confirming the embraced space while searching and positioning the composition. She wished to support the contradiction of care and greed in admiration. While actively investigating her wishes for abilities, the choreographer started to focus on associations that would lead her to the final step of creation. She focused on characteristics of a product: A product to be involved as a third dancer and with characteristics that would enhance and elicit her created way of flower arranging. Commit enhances and confronts with the contradiction of commitment for care and committing the sin of greed. It has a circular shape and curved grooves that fit the turning of the arms and sliding inwards the flowers with a fluent, irregular rhythm, one after another. The bent plane fits the corolla s upwards direction towards the user looking down on it. The grooves support the holding of the corollas and hanging stalks and herewith the lifting of the arm. Commit is of lightweight material, which supports the feeling of growing flower-weight and elegant lift. The sharp rim of Commit demands extra care when entering the steel in the grooves; it makes the user experience that greed is to be balanced with care. The supportive imperative form of Commit takes the role to elicit the user and involve the flowers to Commit (to) Flower Arranging. 2.2 How are you? Dancing: Choreography of a coincident Meeting Duet of two friends Impulsively connected, exploring contact, bouncing and turning in dichotomy: Stopped by impulse he curiously senses distance. He pinches the rubber backside skin of Join, which shape fits in his right hand. By doing so he gives a pulse that circles outwards in all directions, like a ripple on a water surface when a stone is thrown in. He pauses silently and waits to feel the moment the pressure comes back, vibrating in Join. When this happens he pulses again, while he hesitantly chooses a street that imposes a direction. He turns right. He receives the answering pulse a bit quicker then before while he heads towards the next street corner. Being sure now he increases his pace. The pulses speed up gradually, until he reaches the next corner. Here he meets a choice of direction again. Through ongoing pulse exchange with his friend, they attempt to reach each other: They both are equipped with their Join s sense of distance, but handicapped because they cannot feel direction. Direction towards each other can be found by experience and experiment, by changing place and sensing change of distance through ongoing pulse exchange. On the next corner he guesses and enters a new street, to the left; now the duration between sending and receiving increases. Wrong direction. Resolutely he turns and chooses the other street. The tension of curiosity and excitement increases, as the speed of pulses do. He suspects to be able and see his friend now and starts looking around, hoping his eyes will show him the way now. It is you! he shouts, when seeing his friend. With shared feeling of surprise they bridge the last piece of distance directly. They approach until they can touch and share a personal space between them. Mirroring each other they right handily link
their Joins to a joint. An affirmative connecting sound can be heard when the hard material of their Joins front parts make contact. Their joint hands transfer into a touching and turning plane, supported by the mirror-fit of their Joins knob-trailshape. Their rotating point of contact affects their full bodies and challenges them to explore their dichotomy movement. Throughout this meeting game, they bodily investigate the way they relate. They interactively explore their equivalence and differentiated roles through their Join body extensions.
This Choreography of Interaction was created by the second year students Jan Hoefnagels, Charles Mignot, Bram Steevens, Bram van der Vlist and Mathijs Wullems, in the How are you? Dancing -project, at the Department of Industrial Design, in 2004. The creation of their Choreography started with an exploration of a coincident meeting of two friends, as it exists at present. While investigating this meeting interaction, the students recognised the involvement of the infrastructure. This dancer influenced the way the two friends were coincidently led towards each other, until their lines of sight could cross. When this moment of spotting occurred, there appeared to be a short stop-motion; the starting point of an excited tension of opening towards and approaching each other. The students discovered a more or less mirroring approach that evolved to a physical greeting contact, like shaking hands or embracement. The deviation in this symmetry gave expression to their relation, which could be both seen and felt. Through moved exploration of the existing coincident meeting duet, the students got aware of and provided with a scope of possible variables for their meeting Choreography. They also discovered their vision for new Choreography with the idea that the latest communication technologies diminish opportunities of coincidence and physical contact. The students therefore decided to enhance the possibility of a coincident physical meeting duet. Supported by their exploration, experience and motivation, the students elaborated their idea. They created a play that involved the moment of recognition, the building up tension of approaching and the linking together to explore the expression of friendship. Inspired by their discovery of the role of infrastructure, which leads to and opens views to see a friend coincidently, they involved this infrastructure as an important dancer in their new Choreography. In the original coincident meeting, the two friends met when the infrastructure allowed them to see each other. In the new choreography they wanted to introduce sensing a friend without seeing him yet. They wished to sense over a wider range and hence elicit a curious search through the infrastructure to find out who this friend is. Based on their discovery of the tendency to mirror in the initial coincident duet, the students created the idea of action-reaction cooperation between the friends to meet each other. Because distance and direction appeared to be a key aspect in the approach to meeting, the cooperation aimed at finding direction and decreasing distance. This way the students created a search of finding direction and decreasing distance, until the friends could spot each other. Subsequently the Choreography was elaborated from the moment of spotting, towards a way of making physical contact that allows the expression of friendship quality. The students worked on different moved explorations to find the appropriate way of explorative physical contact. They discovered a symmetrical link with the palms of the hands that touch as two planes. These planes formed a touching and turning joint between the friends and allowed a play of leading and following (Although the students did not know they reinvented it, this kind of duet is well known as an exercise in improvisational dance. This exercise makes dancers explore the way they can relate into a duet. The role of leading and following can interchange, or it reveals a typical leader and follower). The student s intention was to support and elicit the expression of the kind of friendship: playful or gentle or provocative, etc.
The students completed their Choreography with the design of a product that elicits and motivates the created meeting play: It takes two Joins to elicit the game of approach of two friends. At a distance they are in contact through a wireless connection. Both Joins embody a transmitter and receiver that reach over a distance between 100 and 1000 meters. The backside of Join fits and affords the pinching hand with its hand palm shape and flexible rubber material. A bend sensor catches the pinch as input, which is translated into the sending of a signal. The output of the received signal involves a vibration motor that can be felt through the rubber backside of Join, in the palm of the hand. The time duration between sending from the one Join to receiving in the other, depends on the distance between both of them (and therefore on the distance between the two friends): The shorter the time to receive a signal back, the nearer the other friend is. To support this time-distance relation, both Joins involve a Receive Signal Strength Indicator, which information is translated into relative change of distance and then in the time duration to give the vibration output. This in- and output design loops rhythmically with the action and reaction of the hands and simultaneous relocating of both friends. It rhythmically connects both friends and it relates to the street pattern that imposes choices of direction to reach each other. At the moment the coulisses of the infrastructure open the way for visual contact, the Joins are designed to motivate joining hand palm contact. Join is designed as half a joint, which fits with the partner Join to be a complete joint. Both halves are of exactly the same shape with a knob in the middle and a circular trail around it. The knob of the one Join fits the trail of the other and visa versa. This equality fits the symmetry between both friends and elicits to link into a plane of touch and turn. The touch and turn connection extends to the different bodily joints of both friends, thus turning and bending them to become an interactive unity. Both Joins join the hands equally, but with the freedom to explore differentiation in the dynamic quality of turning around each other. Herewith the role-play between both friends comes to expression. As a body extension, Join motivates both friends to extend into a joint body and to explore their relation interactively.
2.3 For(m)movement: Choreography of closing and opening dichotomy A crossing of closing and opening, making space by excluding space, almost like breathing, between personal and general space: As if she makes her bag inhale, she lifts her left arm widely upwards, led by the diagonal line of the bag. Her curved arm stretches an opening to the inside of the bag, while she concurrently excludes the world around her. Her arm hence makes an opening and defending gesture at the same time. She enters the space of her personal belongings with her right arm diagonally downwards and with her upper body bending over to allow a view inwards; again corresponding with the bag s diagonal shape. This results in a cross direction of both arms and her line of sight. In reverse order she makes the bag exhale and entangles the big piece of cloth through her intertwining arms. This body crossing embracement gives affirmation of protection of personal belongings. She emphasises the locking, when straightening her back and directing her glance up again, towards the world around her: Closing in means opening outwards again. All happens close to and around the centre of her body; centred on her belly, as this feels as the most natural place to keep, hold and protect. This Choreography of Interaction is a creation of Marieke van Liempd, who participated in the assignment For(m)movement, at the Faculty of Industrial Design, in 2005. Her Choreography started with a moved exploration of the relation between personal belongings, the user and other people in public space. By moving into the situation, Marieke discovered the interesting dichotomy of opening and closing, which involved (1) the excluding an outside world, when opening and entering the way to her personal belongings and (2) the closing in of personal belongings while opening attention to other people and the outside world. As part of this amalgamation she discovered and created the previously described involvement of crossing arms and the focus of the eyes.
Having created this dynamic physical involvement of the user, the personal belongings and the people in the surrounding public space, Marieke generated ideas for product characteristics that elicit this involvement. She built simple models and validated these models by trying them out in her Choreography of Interaction. Through these moving and making iterations she created the last needed element to motivate her interaction design; her final product as an integral part of her Choreography of Interaction: The grand cloth of the bag guides and emphasises the expanding and descending arm, in relation to the belongings and the world around. The pouch of her bag is the central location in her Choreography, which focuses the involvement of the user, the personal belongings and the surrounding public. The skewed shape and lines of the bag relate to the diagonally crossing arms and to the line of sight into the bag and outwards to the world around her. Marieke designed a bag, which mediates and motivates the dichotomy of opening and closing, moving between personal belongings and the surrounding world. 3. Choreography of Interaction as a creation In this part we introduce the way Design Movement sees the design outcome as Choreography of Interaction and we explain the framework on which this Choreography is based. After this explanation the framework is put into the light of the research themes that investigate unity of form, function and interaction and the semantics of movement: We lay out the fabric of product form, semantics, movement and interaction according to Design Movement.
We do realise we ask quite a lot of concentration from the reader in this part. Although knowing this, we hope you want to bear with us here, as this part withholds the focus of our paper. 3.1 Framework of Choreography of Interaction Design Movement views the design of a product as just an integral part of Choreography of Interaction. This means that Choreography of Interaction is viewed as the design outcome and the product as the part that is interwoven in it. This idea suggests that Choreography of Interaction contains and integrates more than the product alone: We see movement as physical, dynamic as well as meaningful. Choreography of Interaction therefore embodies a trinity of Physical Involvement, Dynamic Quality and Expressed Meaning. These three Choreography of Interaction pivots, strictly speaking, cannot be separated; they are entangled and they overlap. We differentiate this trinity for the sake of design perspective, focus and richness of insight. The choice for differentiation determines the manifestation of our vision. It brings a certain way of looking at reality and consequently a certain character of creative possibilities. Having said this, we now move on to elaborate on this trinity, which forms the framework of Choreography of Interaction: As conventional design is seen as design of something physical, we will start with the pivot of Physical Involvement. Movement is the embodiment of interaction and is physical. This pivot therefore affects who and what are physically involved as dancers in Choreography of Interaction. This naturally includes the user, as the protagonist dancer, but it also involves other people, objects and the location. That is, everything and everyone relevant for the user s concern to move into interaction. Moreover this involves the designed product. It exists as one of all involved dancers and as the one that motivates all others to become involved. Physical Involvement also comprehends the fact that all dancers are involved through their physical characteristics. These characteristics include e.g. shape, dimensions, material, weight, texture, construction, mechanics and electronics; bones, joints, muscles, skin, eyes, other senses, etc. Physical characteristics offer possibilities and constraints to interact. The particularity of the designed product is that its physical characteristics are designed to appeal to the desired physical involvement of other concerned parties and hence to their needed physical characteristics. Physical involvement of the different dancers leads to certain dynamic possibilities and constraints in relation to each other. Here the pivot of Physical Involvement entangles with the neighbouring pivot. This next pivot involves Dynamic Quality. Dynamic Quality is closely related to knowledge and experience from the field of dance; knowledge and experience that we gratefully adapted in our design approach. Because we see it as the crucial pivot that fits physique in movement to meaning of movement, we will go into this matter a bit later. We first proceed with the pivot of Expressed Meaning:
When all dancers are physically involved to form one interactive unity, this happens for a reason, with a given motivation and each dancer having a role. The pivot of Expressed Meaning therefore concentrates on the choreographed meaning of interaction and the different roles that all involved dancers have as part of this. It focuses on the meaning of and roles in interaction, which are expressed in movement. Here the functional meaning of the (inter)action is formed, differentiated in different roles of the dancers, to reach this functionality. Not only functionality comes forward; function is brought to expression in close relation with other nuances of meaning, like social, emotional, cultural, and historical, roles and reasons to interact. When it comes to roles, the role of the user is seen as central, because he or she is concerned primarily with the design for interaction. The role of the product is to elicit and motivate the Choreography, to hence appeal to the user s concern to move into interaction and to take along all other relevant dancers, giving them their interaction role. Expression of Meaning develops through the physical possibilities and constraints of all concerned parties, and their involvement into an interactive unity. In other words: Meaning is expressed through a certain kind of Physical Involvement, which is dynamic and qualitative. This leads once again to the before mentioned neighbouring pivot; the key pivot Dynamic Quality. Physically expressed meaningful involvement in interaction is essentially dynamic; it has a Dynamic Quality. Dynamic Quality is about: The way all dancers are involved through their physical characteristics and as a physically interactive unity. The way the meaning of interaction comes to expression, including the roles that all dancers play as part of this. Dynamic Quality consists of three interconnected dynamic dimensions, which are derived from the Rudolph von Laban movement analysis [6]. The first author of this paper still develops this derivative version to be specifically relevant for Choreography of Interaction. The three dimensions of Dynamic Quality are (1) Spatiality, (2) course of Time and (3) play of Forces. Spatiality involves aspects like directions, paths and planes, personal-general space, big-small, etc. Course of Time concerns e.g. fast-slow, accelerating-decelerating, rhythmic-melodic, regularirregular. Play of Forces is about passive-active use of weight, tension-releaserelaxation, control-uncontrolled, free and bound flow, etc. Combination and composition of these dimensions colour the quality of dynamic interplay of user, product and other involved parties and can result in qualitative dynamic actions like pressing (a composition of direct forward and ongoing active weight), shivering (a rhythmic tensed small quality), punching (a quick, direct, etc.), pushing, sliding, fluttering, wringing, dabbing, smashing, slashing, gliding, thrusting, pulling, floating, etc. Recapitulating: Dynamic Qualities arise from the physical possibilities and constraints of all dancers together and concurrently they bring forward the meaning and roles of these dancers: Dynamic Quality Expresses Meaning and Involves Physicality in Choreography of Interaction.
Now we have come full circle and shown the interconnection and integration of our approach s three framework pivots. This interconnection and integration is essential for the creative and creating process of Choreography of Interaction, which we will explain further in the next part of this paper. Before doing so, we first highlight the framework s concern with product form, semantics, movement and interaction. 3.2 The fabric of product form, semantics, movement and interaction. When clarifying the framework, we implicitly came across the link between Design Movement and the research themes that investigate unity of form, function and interaction and the semantics of movement. We will now make this link explicit. Our basic contention is that movement embodies interaction and consists of Physical Involvement, Dynamic Quality and Expressed Meaning. - This means that Design Movement understands movement as interaction. - Another consequence of this idea is that Design Movement does not perceive interaction as something between product and user in a context. Choreography of Interaction is the total system of user, product and other involved elements in interaction, as integral part of interaction. - Subsequently movement is not perceived as something that is produced by a body or object. Movement involves physicality, the body or object is movement;
physicality has form because of what it can do. This also means that Design Movement understands the product form as movement. - Movement is neither perceived in relation to one object or person. An object or body is in motion in relation with the other involved parties. This is also the case when one of the parties is statically involved. Being static contributes to the dynamic quality of the interaction as a whole. - This contention also holds that the dynamic quality of movement relates and interconnects physicality and meaning, which brings us to the relation of product form and semantics. - According to Design Movement, the product form is part of movement. The product form contains physical characteristics that elicit and offer possibilities for meaningful dynamic involvement with other parties. These characteristics include, among other things, shape, dimensions, material, weight, texture, construction and mechanics. - Semantics is what is being expressed, the expressed meaning. The meaning emanates from the dynamically involved physique or dynamic possibilities and constraints that are suggested by this physique. This physique does not only concern the product form, it concerns all involved parties and their unity. In other words: things have a certain form to meaningfully move into interaction with the world they are part of. - Here the position of function comes forward. All involved parties physically unite as a dynamic system, which expresses the meaning of this unification. These semantics regard, amongst other things, the functional meaning of the interactive unity and the role that each involved has while taking part in it. This functional aspect of meaning merges with other nuances of meaning, like social, emotional en cultural expression and roles. This part of our paper and these points specifically, bring forward how Choreography of Interaction unites a diversity of design topics and how the framework supports insight in this fabric. In the following part we will give an idea of how this fabric is woven: The Choreography of Interaction process. 4. Choreography of interaction as a way of creating In this part we explain how the framework is filled in as a design process, establishing Choreography of Interaction. We subsequently show how the research topics productform, semantics, movement and interaction are interwoven and come into existence in the Design Movement process. 4.1 Framework for Choreography of Interaction Design Movement creates movement through movement: Choreography of Interaction is explored and created in (inter)action and through the moving body of the designer. Consequently the designer becomes an interaction choreographer. This
choreographer puts himself in the place of the protagonist, the user. Being this way involved in his creation, interaction is put in motion and wakens his bodily awareness of the various framework issues comprehensively. Moved exploration at the same time activates creativity; a principle we adopted from improvisational dance. The use of the moving body as an embodying tool empowers the interaction choreographer to discover and create unexpected, because unexplored, interactive possibilities and combinations. The choreographer hence explores to discover and, with that, create. By doing so, he brings his Choreography of Interaction into being, including the trinity of pivots and thus the design of the product as an integral and motivating part. This way Design Movement comprehends the design process and the interaction design outcome as a unity; creating and the creation are interlaced. By being involved in his to-be-created interaction, the interaction choreographer establishes the framework. The product evolves integrally as sediment, resulting from Choreography of other framework aspects. In other words: The product is finally designed as the not-yet-existing 'dancer', with its physique and related role, needed to afford the created Choreography of Interaction. This means the choreographing process starts by moving away form focus on a product and by moving towards a first sensitivity of interaction as a whole. The composing of the framework proceeds with explorations to determine who and what are relevant and interesting to be involved in the Choreography. Here it concerns already existing dancers : user(s), other people, objects, location, etc. Because the choreographer is actively involved, he is able to experience and experiment the trinity of Physical Involvement, Dynamic Quality and Expressed Meaning. He can explore and discover the possible roles when in- or excluding certain parties. He subsequently can feel the dynamic possibilities that therefore arise. He can experience what this adds and changes to the meaning of the interaction; e.g. social and emotional nuances and the way the function can be interpreted and named. This way he can make a first overall investigation through the framework and the first estimation and decision of who and what are to be involved. The composing then evolves towards decisions of how the choreographer wishes the chosen dancers to be involved with each other. He elaborates and refines the coherence of Physical Involvement, Dynamic Quality and Expressed Meaning. He now explores and chooses the way to involve the different dancers with each other, through their physical possibilities and into a certain dynamic fit. He investigates the composition of dynamic dimensions, the nuances of the dynamic quality and, as a reason for this all, the refinement of the meaning of and roles in his Interaction Choreography. By detailing the embodiment of interaction, he actively fine-tunes the expression of meaning; the functionality, the social, emotional, cultural, etc. roles and relations. Here he elaborates the Choreography into clear decisions about what he wants to elicit and motivate, as a reason for a product to exist for. What makes this part notable is that the choreographer explicitly designs the involvement of all already existing dancers, including their relevant and useful physical characteristics. This idea compares to the view on the computer s interface that determines the physicality of the user who needs one eye and a hand with 24
fingers to fit with the computer [7]. The design of the computer implicitly involves a design of the involvement of its user. In Design Movement the involvement of the user is choreographed explicitly. However (!): This immediately raises the question whether the involvement of the user, the protagonist of interaction, should be controlled by design. The answer is no: The intention of this explicit attention is to concentrate on ELICITING a user to interact. It is the idea and our ideology to propose the user a motive for expression and experience and to enable new possibilities. Weighing the range between demanding and eliciting, between steering actions and offering freedom for expression, comes forward explicitly in the Design Movement approach, as an important and sensitive part of design. Until now the process was specifically focused on designing involvement of people and things that already exist. These dancers however are not motivated and connected by anything yet and therefore the Choreography of Interaction cannot exist yet. Another physical element is needed to elicit the Choreography. This missing link is the to-be-designed product. The product is to be created to offer the needed physical characteristics and role to fit and motivate the wanted physical involvement and roles of the other parties. The product s characteristics are needed to elicit the desired dynamic quality that meaningfully relates all participants to become an interactive unity. By putting the designed involvement of existing dancers in motion again, the choreographer explores and designs the physical characteristics and related role of the product. By moving he thinks with his full body and wakens associative thinking towards possible product characteristics. His associative thinking is stimulated because he literally senses the missing link, the to-be-designed product. By making many (simple) models and exploring their fit in his Choreography, he iteratively elaborates the product and thus the Choreography of Interaction into a final outcome. Throughout this process the choreographer directs the who and what, the way and the why of his Choreography of Interaction. During this process it is crucial for the choreographer to develop and detail coherence in the framework through movement. It would be impossible to device the unity of aspects of the framework through imagination and observation only. By being physically involved, the diversity AND unity of the framework can be experienced, hence grasped and created to become a coherent Choreography of Interaction. Involvement of the choreographer in his creation literally moves him through the framework and hence supports direct and interconnected contact with his Choreography. Consequently the choreographer s experience directs and motivates the creation of Choreography of Interaction. 4.2 Weaving product form, semantics, movement and interaction. Having introduced the way Choreography of Interaction is created, we will put forward when, where and how the before mentioned recent research topics are interlaced in this process.
Our basic contention here is that interaction and thus the fabric of Physical Involvement, Dynamic Quality and Expressed Meaning, is embodied through movement. - As movement is the embodiment of interaction, it is a natural consequence that the designer embodies interaction through movement. Movement here literally is meant to move into interaction as a way of designing, in full contact with what is created and throughout the design process. This way the designer can sense, interconnect and motivate the way he fills in all aspects in the framework and thus establish the Choreography of Interaction. - The process is entirely focused on movement, with the product form as an integral part of this. The product form evolves as a trace in the creation of Choreography of Interaction, when all other aspects of the framework have practically been designed. The choreographer literally and physically can feel the missing link, and thus is able to form the physical product, which is an establishment of physical characteristics. - In relation to this, the choreographer senses the meaning and role of the product that is needed to engage the user and other parties to become involved meaningfully. By moved and modelling explorations he can feel and hence steer the development of the product form towards the proper body language and related character: The products appropriate semantics to afford the Choreography of Interaction. - Involved with this semantic understanding, the choreographer steers the different roles of the dancers as part of the functional meaning of the Choreography. Throughout the process the functional role-play is refined with other meaningful aspects like social, emotional and cultural expression and roles. This refinement is completed when the role of the product becomes evident. - To conclude: form and semantics of a product come into existence in parallel. The interaction choreographer discovers the proper product form and the needed product body language when he attempts to afford the created dynamic quality of interplay. These points highlight the way unity of form, function and interaction and the semantics of movement arise and become united while creating Choreography of Interaction. This completes our introduction to Design Movement in relation to the mentioned design research topics. In conclusion we like to show the opportunities we see for future developments, both for Design Movement and for design research and practice in general. 5. In conclusion In our paper we introduced the Design Movement approach in the light of two recent themes in design research, namely (1) the unity of form, function and interaction and (2) the semantics of movement.
In our experience this is a challenging and appropriate way to approach design. We believe Design Movement offers opportunities to bring novel nuances and diversification in design. A shift of focus from the design of products to the design of movement leads to a lively, rich and integrated motivation for design. It leads the way to new kinds of products or refreshing perspectives on existing products. At least that is how we see it and we hope to have challenged design research and practice to evaluate these ideas. The other way round we feel challenged by recent developments in new technologies. What possibilities do sensors, actuators, software, smart materials, etc. offer, when integrated in Choreography of Interaction? We are eager to explore and create selfactive behaviour of products as an integral and motivating part of Choreography of Interaction. We also will further explore the borderland we started to share with the dance profession. Design Movement incorporates knowledge and experience from the field of dance, i.e., choreography, improvisation and movement analysis. We therefore work in close relation with this other professional world and imagine this can be even intensified into a joint and novel professional field. We are not the only ones that recognise the value of knowledge from the field of dance for design research and practice. Research at the Mads Clausen Institute for Product Innovation in Denmark, for example, involves the work of Rudolph von Laban to support their idea of Interaction Quality and their observation and analysis of the user s movement in interaction [8]. Olin College of Engineering, Boston USA, also discovered the value of the moving body of the designer. Here students are asked to design mechanical principles through moved exploration [9]. The works of MCI and Olin have many confirming similarities with Design Movement, but also very interesting differences to explore and exchange ideas about. This confirms our belief and interest in close co-operation with other approaches in design research and practice and with the dance profession. We sincerely hope this paper motivates and challenges further discussion, development and co-operation with respect to the role of movement in design. We hope to have triggered many ideas to explore and questions to answer in interplay with each other. EPPUR SI MUOVE. Acknowledgements This paper was written while the second author was Nierenberg Chair at the School of Design, Carnegie Mellon University. We like to thank the students of the Faculty of Industrial Design, TU/e, for letting us use their choreographic work as an illustration of this paper. Many more thanks for enthusiastically providing us with extra visualisations: Marieke van Liempd with her For(m)movement creation and Jan Hoefnagels, Charles Mignot, Bram Steevens, Bram van der Vlist and Mathijs Wullems of the How are you? Dancing -project.
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